Secure E-mail Communications Through Cryptographic Techniques—A Study

E-mail is one of the leading and most reliable modes of communications even after the emergence of many new methods of electronic communication systems. E-mail messages are transmitted from the senders’ system to the recipients’ system over the Internet with the help of some intermediary nodes including servers, switches, and gateways. E-mail communication relies on some of the oldest communication protocols which have not been modified ever enough since. Hence, e-mail communication is vulnerable to some security risks including eavesdropping, spoofing, tampering, and phishing. The e-mail communication system makes use of some security protocols, techniques, and data encryption methods in many ways to make this communication secure and reliable. This paper reviews the security of e-mail protocols and data encryption techniques that are in use in the e-mail system. It reports the results of a study of the roles and advantages of e-mail security techniques, protocols, and algorithms. This paper also highlights security vulnerabilities in an e-mail communication system and the possibility for improvement in the control measures.

[1]  Simon Heron,et al.  Encryption: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) , 2009 .

[2]  M. Tariq Banday,et al.  A Practical Study of E-mail Communication through SMTP , 2010 .

[3]  Bruce Schneier,et al.  Applied cryptography : protocols, algorithms, and source codein C , 1996 .

[4]  Zoran Hercigonja.  Comparative Analysis of Cryptographic Algorithms , 2017 .

[5]  VS Prajwal,et al.  User Defined Encryption Procedure For IDEA Algorithm , 2018, 2018 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI).

[6]  Whitfield Diffie,et al.  New Directions in Cryptography , 1976, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[7]  Colin Smythe,et al.  A comparative study of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP) and X.400 Electronic Mail Protocols , 1997, Proceedings of 22nd Annual Conference on Local Computer Networks.

[8]  Jon Postel,et al.  Mail Transfer Protocol , 1980, RFC.

[9]  Xin Zhou,et al.  Research and implementation of RSA algorithm for encryption and decryption , 2011, Proceedings of 2011 6th International Forum on Strategic Technology.

[10]  Tao Wang,et al.  Cache Timing Attacks on Camellia Block Cipher , 2009, IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch..

[11]  Jongsung Kim,et al.  On the Security of HMAC and NMAC Based on HAVAL, MD4, MD5, SHA-0 and SHA-1 (Extended Abstract) , 2006, SCN.

[12]  Yi Zhang,et al.  A New Secure E-mail Scheme Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography Combined Public Key , 2008, 2008 IFIP International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing.

[13]  Marshall T. Rose,et al.  SMTP Service Extensions , 1993, RFC.

[14]  M. Tariq Banday,et al.  Multiple E-mail address certificate , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI).

[15]  Ali Ahmad Milad,et al.  Comparative Study of Performance in Cryptography Algorithms (Blowfish and Skipjack) , 2012 .

[16]  Chao Li,et al.  New Observation on Camellia , 2005, Selected Areas in Cryptography.